"If a thousand men were not to..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.”

“The improved means to the unimproved end.”

“Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.”

“Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.”

“Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”

“Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.”

“Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors. If those taxes are excessive, they are reflected in idle factories, in tax-sold farms, and in hordes of hungry people, tramping the streets and seeking jobs in vain. Our workers may never see a tax bill, but they pay. They pay in deductions from wages, in increased cost of what they buy, or - as now - in broad unemployment throughout the land.”

“[Not enough is known about solid geometry] and for two reasons: in the first place, no government places value on it; this leads to a lack of energy in the pursuit of it, and it is difficult. In the second place, students cannot learn it unless they have a teacher. But then a teacher can hardly be found.”

“The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don't understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.”